1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus for printing intended characters, images etc. on a print substrate such as a T-shirt.
2. Discussion of the Background
Conventionally, an apparatus and method for printing characters, images, etc. on a print substrate such as a T-shirt, using screen printing are known in which a plurality of screens corresponding to printing colors are prepared and are used to print each color on the surface of the print substrate so that printed colors are overlapped. Since the screen printing requires a plurality of exclusive screens corresponding to designs and colors, making the screens is troublesome and expensive. Thus, screen printing is not suitable for high-mix, low-volume production type printing. Recently, methods for printing on a print substrate such as a T-shirt by using an inkjet printer to eject ink droplets directly on the print substrate have been carried out. JP-A-2002-154247 and JP-A-2007-031888 describe such printing apparatuses and methods using an inkjet printer.
For printing characters, images, etc. on a print substrate made of cloth such as a T-shirt by using an inkjet printer, it may be required to conduct a lot of processing steps such as preprocessing for the purpose of preventing ink blurring and post-processing for the purpose of protecting images printed on the surface of the print substrate. Especially as an industrial printing apparatus, there is known an apparatus of a type that print substrates are conveyed by a conveying means such as a belt conveyer. In this case, a pallet is put on a conveying member such as conveyer belt and the print substrates are placed and held at predetermined positions on the pallet. In this state, the print substrates are conveyed together with the pallet and stopped at every working position where various working devices are placed so that print substrates are processed according to the processing steps such as the aforementioned preprocessing.
In a case where the print substrates are conveyed together with the pallet by the conveying means such as a belt conveyer and a predetermined printing process is carried out relative to the print substrates on the pallet being conveyed, such an apparatus is only allowed to conduct relatively rough printing without requiring high precision and it is difficult to conduct printing requiring high precision because of variation in speed and generation of vibration during the conveyance. Therefore, there is an idea to fix the pallet at a predetermined working position on the conveying member such as a conveyer belt where a predetermined printing process is conducted relative to the print substrates. However, in such a case, there is a problem of requiring a moving mechanism for moving a working device such as a printer head having a plurality of inkjet nozzles forward, backward, leftward, and rightward above the fixed print substrates.
Thus, a printing apparatus and method are desired that can solve the aforementioned problems.